TICH wins TiE-Hyderabad Young Entrepreneurs business plan competition

The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Hyderabad Chapter has announced the winners of its initiative TiE Young Entrepreneurs (TyE) Hyderabad Business Plan Competition in the finale held at ISB, Gachibowli.

TyE Hyderabad Business Plan Competition is a program designed to foster entrepreneurship and leadership skills in the students of 9th to 12th standard. As a part of the competition, 6 teams participated in the competition wherein they presented their business plans to a jury of industry experts.

Kick started in August 2014, this year’s competition had an integrated 16 week agenda for the 25 students who were shortlisted from the applications received. During the first 8 weeks, the TyE students were introduced to various aspects of entrepreneurship such as Opportunity Recognition, Marketing, Finance and Funding, Business Law, Business Models, Presentation, Virtual Business simulation and Team Building Skills. The next 8 weeks were allotted to the students to make business prototypes under the guidance of experienced mentors.

The curriculum of TyE has been developed to achieve two primary objectives in the young students, first, to have basic knowledge required to develop an idea into a viable business plan and secondly, to sharpen the required skills that can nurture them into a professional. The overall program involved mentoring, inspirational talks, hands-on class room instruction, workshops by established industry leaders to cultivate creativity, self confidence and innovation. It also included business plan creation and visits to companies.

Commenting on the occasion, Safir Adeni, President, TiE Hyderabad and Managing Partner, Ineda Venture Group, said, “We are thrilled to discover some amazing talent through this competition. TiE was conceptualized in order to enhance innovative thinking ability among these young students and then providing them the resources required to hone their capabilities further. We are pleased that our initiative is being well received.”

The Hyderabad chapter winning team of TyE Business Plan Competition will now be participating in the TyE Global Business Plan competition in June 2015 scheduled to be held at a global city. The team will compete with best business plans received from all TiE Chapters across the globe. The top teams at the global level will jointly receive a cash prize of US$ 10,000.

The winning business idea of the TiE Young Entrepreneurs (TyE) Hyderabad Business Plan Competition is The Idea: Internet of call (TICH) which enables a common man with no internet connection to get information from the internet. It allows anyone to call a phone number toll free and seek information from a tele representative.

"The idea is to empower those who do not have the means to connect to so many services on the internet which the privileged are able to do and get additional benefits when compared to the underprivileged. What we do is we connect these people to the internet. This gives a two-way benefit; firstly, it empowers the underprivileged and secondly, it proliferates the e-commerce and the technology aspect that is expected to boom in the next 10-20 years.” said, Yagna Agarwal, one of the winners of TyE Business Plan Competition

“We will act as middle men because these people do not have access to the internet due to various reasons. We talk to them on call, we provide them the services that are otherwise provided on the internet for the use of the privileged people,” added Agarwal.

In the first season of the program in 2013 as well, students were handpicked by TiE Hyderabad for this exclusive curriculum and the winner of Hyderabad chapter presented its business plan at the global event held at Canada. In fact, since 2007, TiE Hyderabad under its ‘Buddies’ program has been mentoring school students through experts from various domains and industries.